What would Maverick say? A China TV broadcast used a clip from Tom Cruise's movie "Top Gun" as if it were real Chinese military training footage. Facebook

January 31, 2011

ADVERTISEMENT

Sign Up for

Our free email newsletters

10 things you need to know today

Today's best articles

Today's top cartoons

The good news newsletter

The week's best photojournalism

Daily business briefing

The video: Has the Chinese military signed up Tom Cruise? Last week, a Chinese state-TV "news" segment purporting to show a Chinese J-10 fighter jet destroying a U.S. aircraft was identified as a clip from the classic 1986 flick Top Gun — leaving state propagandists red-faced. The "blunder," shown to millions of Chinese viewers on Jan. 23, has since been removed from the channel's website.The reaction: This isn't the first time China has appropriated "fictional material from the U.S. for use in news," says Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal. The state-run Xinhua news agency notoriously used a cartoon x-ray image of Homer Simpson's head back in 2007 "to illustrate a story about the discovery of a genetic link to multiple sclerosis." I guess this is what happens, says Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post, "when you feel the need, the need for, uh, footage." Watch a comparison between the two sets of footage here: